This is one of my least favorite of the Fatty Arbuckle shorts. Yes, that’s partly because Buster doesn’t have a whole lot to do, but it’s also because the story is paper-thin, the violence veers too far out of bounds for slapstick, and it mostly feels like stuff just happens. Overall, it pretty aptly demonstrates Fatty’s philosophy that the average mind of the movie-going audience is twelve years old.
Fatty is a tenant at a boarding house. When a big to-do breaks out between the cook (Al St. John) and the delivery boy (Buster) with the maid (Josephine Stevens, who also played the girl in The Butcher Boy) caught in the middle, there’s a major culling of the staff and Fatty winds up the new hired help. Lots of havoc, running around, and workplace no-nos.
Like I said, there’s a lot happening here but not much going on. It just kind of careens from one thing to the next with no real thought as to why. Also, the violence gets way over-the-top. I know that that’s what you sign up for with slapstick, and Buster’s films show him getting into plenty of scrapes he has no logical business surviving (although in his movies, it’s usually related to outrageous falls rather than than fighting,) but here, it’s just too much. While I’m down with characters scrapping or throwing food, Buster winds up chasing Al with a kitchen knife and throwingit at him. That’s way beyond, “I’m gonna get you!” or, “Why, I oughta…” That’s just insane. Also, a later scene finds Fatty randomly deputized by a cop who’s tailing a thief, and the cop naturally gives Fatty a gun (you know, as cops do.) As it happens, Fatty would have to shape up quite a bit before he could work his way up to being no help at all; he hangs around the kitchen aimlessly shooting the gun for kicks, all the while causing a panic as bullets fly in the next room. What the what?!
But there is some good stuff. When Fatty accidentally sets his bed on fire with a cigarette, I love the calm, matter-of-fact way he tries to put it out one teacupful of water at a time. Once he becomes the new cook/butler, there are some neat gags – in one, camera trickery allows him carry in a full service in a bundled-up tablecloth, the table setting itself perfectly as he lays down the cloth, and in another (gross but amusing) bit, he uses a sponge to serve (and unserve) soup. Also, I’m not sure if he invented the dancing bread rolls gag, but he certainly put it on camera years before Chaplin did; The Rough Housepredates The Gold Rush by about eight years.
So where’s Buster in all of this, you ask? He’s used pretty sparingly, doing double duty in two smallish roles as the gardener (his fake beard is ridiculous, but you can recognize that tumbling anywhere) and the delivery boy who apparently tries to murder Al St. John with a knife before both of them join the police force (the cops have incredibly lax standards in this short.) It’s after he becomes a cop that he has the most fun. I’ve raved before about the absolutely amazing throwaway scene in which, starting from a dead stop, he scissorkicks a taller man in the face for basically no provocation – it makes no sense but it’s so impressive. There’s also a long running-around sequence that involves tumbles, flips, and getting pretty hilarious snagged on a fence.
Warnings
No comments:
Post a Comment